


LESSONS

by Mikkeneko



Series: Anders Goes to Orzammar [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 11:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8055073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: A "One Elegant Solution" interlude. Anders persuaded Bhelen to hire the casteless to build the tower for his mages. But is that solution really going to work?





	LESSONS

Voldrik Glavanok had been involved in a lot of nug-brained schemes since he came to the surface, but this one might just have been the craziest of all.

The thing was, most of the nug-brained schemes he’d worked on since coming to the surface were, well, thought up by surfacers. Humans were a nice enough lot, but flighty and thoughtless, no knowledge of their own history to ground and support them. They didn’t know any better, but you’d think that the King of Orzammar would. The fee that Bhelen was paying him for this job was fair enough, but Voldrik still wouldn’t have touched it if word hadn’t come down from the seneschal at Vigil’s Keep that Paragon Brosca was throwing her own weight behind the project.

Over the years Voldrik had helped build a labyrinth for the treasure vault of a paranoid Orlesian noble, a watchtower with no doors or windows on the ground floor to stick some human deshyr girl in, and a keep for Wardens. Now he was building a tower for mages to live in. Fine. Done and dusted.

No, what was stupid about this job was that he  _apparently_ had to use a load of casteless dusters to do it.

Voldrik considered himself a fair-minded man, when it came to the casteless. He’d thrown off most of the deep lord prejudices about dusters being barely a notch above animals, irreperably degraded and savage by nature. If that was really the case, maybe they wouldn’t be so eager to accept dust-born babies as house heirs, eh? Except when it was convenient to do so. He’d known casteless that were good, worthy dwarves; Paragon Brosca herself had been born casteless, and he’d admired Sigrun, the Legionnaire, to the greatest extent that she’d invited him to do so. That the casteless could, and in the right circumstances  _would_ , reach to better their lot in life was a stone-hard fact.

But there was quite a leap between knowing a few good eggs among the casteless and trying to entrust them with a task they were manifestly not equipped to do. The moment the unorganized gaggle of dust folk had shown up on Voldrik’s worksite, he’d very nearly thrown down his tools and gone back to Amaranthine. 

At least they were willing and eager to get to work – he’d give them that. But rust and rain take him, nine out of every ten of them couldn’t even read! Most weren’t able to work with numbers beyond the most basic of sums; a few couldn’t even do that. None of them had the first clue what to do with a hammer and chisel, let alone the more complex tools used in architecture.

With a proper team of builders, Voldrik could have had the tower up inside a month. As it was, after a month in the project he’d barely laid the foundation stones, and that only because they were rough-cut and laid with brute physical force. Strength, and a willingness to apply it, were the only qualities the casteless really had to spare. But to build a tower that would stand and endure, he needed skilled workers.

He could acquire some. He had the contacts –but the King’s messenger had told him that his job here was not only to see the tower built, but to see the builders educated in the process. Educated! As though a single season of training could make up for a lifetime of ignorance. 

Voldrik had tried, Ancestors knew he had tried. He’d set up a little forum at the edge of the worksite in a little dell with the best acoustics, stood in the middle of the circle and delivered lectures and demonstrations on the basic skills they’d need to know. The problem was, these poor casteless blighters had never known a day’s study in their lives. They’d never learned  _how_   to learn. They’d show up at his lessons all bright and eager, and within an hour they’d have wandered off, lost interest and begun chatting or wrestling among themselves, or making idle doodles in the dirt. The end of the lecture would come and, when invited to demonstrate the skills they’d just learned, not one in five of them would be able to do it.

The casteless were unmanageable, point and fact. They showed up to work with their kids in tow, apparently having nowhere to leave them back in Dust Town, and then let them run riot around the valley without any attempt at keeping them supervised. They didn’t know to bring their own food, how to keep hydrated through hard work in the sun, how to lift or move weights, how to follow orders without arguing.

It was a lost cause, hopeless and helpless, but Voldrik gritted his teeth and kept on giving the lectures anyway. This project was doomed to fail before it ever got off the ground, but the gangue could take anyone who said he hadn’t done his part.

Then the mages showed up. 

Voldrik wasn’t even sure why they were here. Well, he knew in the broader sense; no dwarf who lived on the surface could afford to be completely ignorant of current events. But he didn’t know why they were  _here,_  gallivanting around in the valley before their tower had even been built yet instead of sitting nice and comfortable in the city below. But here they were, milling about aimlessly, exploring the valley, chasing each other with hands of fire and ice and wreaking havoc on the local scenery like it was all some grand game.

It was clear that they were fascinated by the casteless. Most of them had never seen a dwarf before in their lives, locked up in a Tower that dwarves did not frequent. They were entranced by the casteless children, openly envious of their complex braided hairstyles, and interested in their tattoos. And, gradually, the casteless overcame their initial defensive surliness and began to show interest right back.

It was the strangest friendship Voldrik had ever seen, but there it was. Maybe it helped, in this case, that both parties were so ignorant of the world outside their own enclaves; the casteless didn’t know to fear the mages, and the mages didn’t know to despise the casteless. However it happened, it soon became a common sight in the valley to see the two very different people mixing and socializing.

On the fifth day of this, something strange began to happen: Voldrik gave his usual lecture, to the crowd of usually disinterested casteless, but he looked up at one point to see a gaggle of mages clustered at the edge of his makeshift classroom, hanging on every word.

After that, it became more and more common for the mages to turn up at Voldrik’s lesson. Maybe they were interested in the process of creating what was to be their future home; maybe they were just bored, and the environment of the classroom was something both comforting and familiar. Either way, they would show up faithfully and on time, sit quietly and attend carefully, and by the end of the lecture they’d have filled up a new page in their notebooks with diagrams and notes.

And as the days went by, to Voldrik’s enormous surprise, the casteless began to follow their lead. Like mimics, the dusters would follow the mages to the classroom and sit when they sat, listen when they listened, leave only when they left. The disruptions and distractions dropped off; the casteless would actually stay for the whole lecture instead of wandering off midway through. Voldrik knew all they needed to know about stonemasonry, but he could not teach them how to learn. The mages didn’t know the first thing about stone or architecture, but by the Paragons, they were masters at being students.

And although it was slow to start, gradually, incrementally, the lessons began to stick. For the first time, the casteless were working in teams to cut and shift blocks. For the first time, the casteless were beginning to use their tools the proper way. And when for the first time, Voldrik saw a casteless woman turn to a mage who was watching with great interest and ask her a question, only to have the mage pull out their notebook and point to a diagram on the page –

He began to think that they might really do this.

Voldrik Glavanok had been involved in a lot of nug-brained schemes since he came to the surface, but this one might just work.

* * *

 

~end.


End file.
